


Easier Without.

by OdioEtAmo



Series: In The Aftermath and Companion Pieces [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: 1930s, M/M, historical fiction - Freeform, oh just the usual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OdioEtAmo/pseuds/OdioEtAmo
Summary: A story about love, even where it's not wanted.
Relationships: Kurt Eckhardt/Lieutenant Ellis
Series: In The Aftermath and Companion Pieces [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728412
Kudos: 3





	Easier Without.

_The thing my mother told me_

_It can't be true, I'm sure._

_She said, Once you are soiled_

_You'll never again be pure._

_That isn't true of linen_

_And it isn't true of me._

_Let the river run over the linen_

_Quick it's clean as can be._

* * *

It’s a dappled day. As usual the line outside the Admiralty board stretches out through the yard, officer behind officer under the tormented sky. So I think I’ll be very lucky if I stay dry today. It would be okay, if there was something I could do, something physical, even stretch my legs just a little with a walk. But this interminable waiting… it gets to me. It feels wrong to stay standing still so long.

Some of the officers in front of me are talking. God save me, one of them just glanced my way. I think I’ll gaze off toward the gate in case one of them has gotten the wrong idea. It’s a beautiful square, even the gates are so well kept. It’s what you come to expect here, everything kept shiny as new and well kept. The money’s here for it, and the will. And there’s a man who’s stopped outside the gate. The guards are watching him. So am I, it seems. 

Wait, no, there’s something about him. I know him, I’m sure of it. He turns, arms crossed, watching the entrance, and I can see his dark, close cropped hair. I’ve never seen another man who looks like him, so it couldn’t be anyone else. Mr Eckhardt- Kurt, from the wedding. He’s crossed my mind several times since. More than he should. He felt so easy to be around. But that’ll have been the drink talking, it won’t happen again. He won’t have the slightest idea who I am, and it will be an intolerable encounter and I’ll have lost my place in the line over nothing. And why should he remember me? I’ve never been good company. 

Then he turns away, and almost instinctively I step out of the line. I suppose the decision has been made for me. 

“Mr Eckhart!” I call out, heading towards him. 

He turns, looking confused and not quite pleased. But then he looks at me. He looks at me and I see him smile. 

“Hallo? Is that really you?” He asks me loudly. It wouldn’t very well be someone else, but the way it sounds catches me off guard. I had forgotten how strong his accent is, that’s part of it but he sounds like he’s thought of me. Properly, not just as an afterthought.

“Lieutenant Ellis. Lieutenant-Commander now, actually.” I say, and almost wince at how simple I sound. 

“I suppose I should congratulate you for that.” He says, appraising me. My skin feels warm and itchy as his eyes pass over me. I’m sure he takes a critical eye to what’s placed before him. As he rightly should. Even so my gut feels unpleasantly tight.

“Some would say so.” I say, and leave it at that. I wouldn’t expect him to offer me platitudes. I hope he understands that. 

“Waiting for a posting with the rest of the young hopefuls then? I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be securely placed with old Worther.”

I draw my lips together. He gets to the point admirably. I wouldn’t have mentioned it of my own accord. Truth be told, I’ve dwelt upon it as little as possible.

I dwell on it a deal more than I want to and it stings like damnation. 

“I took leave for an injury. The position had to be filled.” I say coolly. I don’t talk about the nature of my injury, or how I got it, under whose orders, how misjudged those were, or how I had been promised quite solemnly that my return on HMS Phoebus was keenly awaited. If I talked in that manner I would always regret it. Forbearance is a good metric to live by in any case.

“He found someone else did he? What an arse.” Kurt said without ceremony, and Ellis remembered yet more of how he enjoyed talking to Kurt. 

“And you? How are you here?” I ask. It sounds wrong in my mouth but the word evades me. But English isn’t Kurt’s first language so perhaps he doesn’t notice.

“I work not far from here. I just started a week ago- I thought I’d look over the area on my lunch break.” He says, a smile playing off his lips. His smiles are so wild, like being face to face with some uncowed predator from the wilderness. It’s mesmerising. Somehow or another I can barely stop looking at his lips.

“You’ve eaten?” I ask, and don’t sound like I’m hoping for something, though I am at heart.

“Not yet.” His smile deepens, almost like he’s amused, and his eyes meet mine. “Would you care to lunch with me?”

Well how can I say no to that?

We end up in a pub, somewhere off the main track. It seems more or less to cater entirely to the comings and goings of the admiralty. It doesn’t seem like the sort of place Kurt would frequent, given all his talk at the wedding, of his direct opposition of any conflict which he sees as serving the interests of the elite and not the working people. He doesn’t like military men.

I thought on the conversation we had that night, actually. Surely, all war involves the interests of those who fight them, which includes the working people, regardless of whether it designs to aid their condition, so a war being short and efficiently fought is as much in their interests as it is anyone else’s. But he will have an answer for that too, I’m sure. He’s an intelligent man after all. 

“What are you drinking?” Kurt asks me. I look up in surprise. Somehow I’d already lost myself in my own thoughts. I’m on terrible form.

“Just stout for me.”

“How health conscious of you.” Kurt raises an eyebrow at me and leaves me alone at the table. We’re sandwiched into a little corner here, and its a bit of a tight squeeze for me here on the bench. It was polite of him to give me it instead of the outer seat though, which I’m sure nobody ever really wants to be sat at. People brushing past you every other minute, slopping pale ale on your good trousers. 

I muse on the situation while he’s gone. I’m extraordinarily lucky to have bumped into him again like this. He looks good. Healthy, I’d say. I don’t know how someone could ooze such assurance otherwise. Just as striking as he was when I saw him at the wedding. There’s something about him that captures you, the sort of skill that can’t be taught. Like a stage magician. Mysterious and beguiling. Larger than life.

Here he is now, back with the drinks. My stout, kind of him as it is to buy the round. I think that’s scotch for him. I try not to blanch at the sight of it. I’m very glad that I didn’t let him call both of our drinks this time. The last time I saw Kurt and scotch in the same room together, yours truly ended up very, very, very, very drunk. Embarrassing isn’t it? A man in the navy, such a dreadful lightweight. But I am what I am. Better than being a drunkard.

Kurt sets my drink down on the table with more than necessary force and drops himself into his own chair with a profoundly displeased expression. He leans in across the table. 

“They don’t serve food here, according to the barman. It’s outrageous!” 

“Were you expecting them to?” I raise an eyebrow. 

“Well!” Kurt raises his palms. “As far as I knew they might. It’s not like we saw anywhere else selling lunch. I had hoped to pick something up.” 

He sips at his drink easy as you please, though I’m sure it’s strong enough to make me shudder. I don’t fancy his plan for a liquid lunch. 

He leans towards me over the table, and gives me a look I can only describe as conspiratorial.

“You’ve visited other countries with the navy I suppose? You must have noticed that the food culture is abysmal here. Where are the cafes, the delicatessens? Food is the finest thing in life, go anywhere on the continent and they understand that. We spend so much of our lives eating so why does nowhere serve food?”

I affect a shrug. “Little point in serving food if you can’t serve anything good. It’s hard for them here.” 

I can feel Kurt’s eyes on me, weighing up what I’ve said. But my own thoughts are lost to a little Bistro in Paris where I washed plates, many years ago now. It hadn’t been for very long, just a few months when I was just turning fifteen. I’ve barely thought about the place in years but right now I’d give more than I rightly should to eat there again. 

“Either way it’s a shame.” Says Kurt. he’s assumed a haughty look, brought on by hunger I’m sure, and is drinking his scotch faster than I’d trust myself to. 

Carefully I extract my sandwiches out of my coat pocket and remove the brown paper I’ve wrapped them in. There’s a slice of ham and some cooked green beans in each. I put the wrappings on the table and place one of the sandwiches on them.

“For you, if you want.” I say, and take a bite of my own. Clearly he does want, because he picks it up, examining the sandwich closely. 

“Interesting combination.” He says. “Do you like it?” 

“Of course not.” I say, and take another bite. 

He chuckles, and I feel my stomach constrict. It isn’t down to the sandwich. I take great wonder in the fact that I made him laugh. 

“Very good.” He smirks at me. “Thank you for this.”

Credit to him, he gets through his sandwich very quickly. I finish mine in a slightly more sedate manner and make determined yet slow progress through my pint of stout. 

“So, Ellis.” Kurt leans in closer. “Do I get to know what you were waiting around for outside the admiralty?”

My eyes narrow. Even though I do like Kurt it would do to be careful around him. He’s a very principled man and I don’t know that he isn’t involved in political activism, in fact I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. Luckily what I was doing wasn’t particularly sensitive.

“A position came up for a Lieutenant on a cruiser that’s coming into harbour. I was there to put my name down for it.” I admit, which is sadly the truth. I live pathetically on half pay, kept from the sea. Plodding down at half five every morning to check for new postings and plodding back every evening to my tatty little attic room. It’s no way to live, so tethered. The same places day in, day out, never seeing anywhere new. Every morning I want to go, to give it all up and just move on. But something inside me won’t let me, not yet. 

“Will you want to be back soon then?” Kurt asks, very courteously. 

I grunt in response. “No rush. I doubt I’ll get it.” I don’t want to continue on this tack though. “Now you. What brought you here?”

“Me?” Kurt looks faintly amused. It’s fascinating to watch the way his face shifts and changes subtly. “I’m a research fellow at UCL. It’s not far from here.”

I wrack my brains for where that is. I’m not quite fluent in the local geography but I think I know where it is. 

I regard him with a wary eye. “It’s a fair walk from Bloomsbury, isn’t it?”

“It may surprise you but I like a good walk.” Kurt says. It does surprise me actually, he isn’t athletically built. I hadn’t had him down as the type that sought out exercise, clearly wrongly. Perhaps I shouldn’t have made the judgement.

“I also enjoy walking.” I say, perhaps too quickly. I don’t know if it’s because I want him to know that I meant no offence, or to establish a little mutuality. I love walking actually, which is a good thing if you’ve done as much of it as I have. It would certainly be a depressing life I’d lived otherwise.

Kurt pauses, contemplating, and I sip at my beer, contemplating him. 

“Maybe we should walk together sometime?” He suggests, his fingers drumming rhythmically against the table. I can hear it very loudly, even though it should be drowned out by the sounds of the pub. 

It’s not often that I get invitations like this. Less often still that I contemplate taking them up. Really I shouldn’t. It does me no good to become attached to people who I’ll have to leave behind. I open my mouth to refuse, and I can’t quite say it, so I close it again. It’s so nice to talk like this and it need only be once. It should keep my spirits high for the moment, and that in itself is worth pursuing. There’s a difference between prudence and self punishment, and that difference is maintenance.

I say “Yes.”

“Excellent.” Kurt beams broadly, and from his pocket takes out a little black notebook and pencil, which he flips through for a minute. “If you’re free this saturday, I could meet you in the same place outside the admiralty building, at 10? St James’ Park isn’t far from here, we could walk through that.”

I nod. “I’d enjoy that.”

“Super.” He says, a word that sounds very well in his rich, resonant voice and its unmistakable German accent. “I’m glad I bumped into you, Ellis. I hope we’ll see each other often while you’re in London.” 

He stands up and over the table offers me his hand to shake, which I do. It is cool and soft and dry, just like I remember. Our eyes meet, and he nods at me just once before he goes.With that he leaves me in the pub, hunched over the pint that I doggedly refuse to abandon. But still, for whatever reason I feel very warm inside. I hope I’m not sickening for something.


End file.
